EXERCISES

The best gym workout exercises (bodybuilding exercises).

MUSCLE ANATOMY
Your muscles (front)

Your muscles ( Back)

The role of gym workout exercises in bodybuilding.

Gym workout exercises play the most important role in bodybuilding. In other words, workout exercises are the reason for muscles changes. When we perform gym exercises, thereby we force our body to adapt to a new loads, and our muscles become more strong, The size depends at strength. The more overloads, the more strength, and the more muscles.
Workout exercises will damage our muscles. Then our body reacts by building up the muscles in order to became stronger and handle the extra loads and stress. So by gradually increasing the workload in gym exercises we put on our muscles will become bigger and stronger.
Therefore it is very important to choose the best gym workout exercises which will be the most effective in strength building of our muscles. This gym exercises put on our muscles to become bigger much easy then other ones.

The most effective gym workout exercises we need.

All gym workout exercises are divided into two major categories: compound (‘multi-joint’) exercises and isolated (‘single-joint’) ones. See Compound & Accessory Exercises table.

Compound exercises involves two or more joint movements. This gym workout exercises engage big muscle groups into work. As a rule, their performance requires activity of several joints and great physical efforts of the whole body. That’s why compound exercises appear to be the core of the core of strength training and the main part of any gym exercise program for muscle building. Compound exercises are the most effective to become bigger and stronger.

Unlike compound exercises, isolation ones involve mainly one muscle and one joint. They considered auxiliary gym exercises that provide good workout of a particular muscle.

Squats are the example of a classic compound ‘multi-joint’ exercise because it involves several joints (both knee joint and coxofemoral one) work at once.

Leg Curls, is isolated exercise because work only one joint (knee joint).

It’s clear that if you construct your own gym workout routine of compound exercises you will gain a lot from the point of time and energy saving. To involve all your muscles you’ll need only several of such gym exercises and half an hour of your time; and if you do only one-joint exercises that are targeted at one (or at best at two muscles) you’ll ‘stick’ in a gym for at least 1.5-2 hours and efficiency of your workout will be low.

Lots of beginners make this typical mistake – they ignore compound exercises in the gym and concentrate on isolation ones. And it’s especially sad because for beginners exactly compound exercises are the most important means for development of all muscles.

Isolation workout exercises engage only one muscle; they are performed on gym exercise machines and with dumbbells. All these gym exercises contribute little to the whole process. Their movement biomechanics is such that it’s not possible to work with the weights that are enough for muscle growth stimulation. You can ask, ‘What are they for, then?’ All these gym exercises are included into the arsenal of professional bodybuilders because they assist ‘perfection’ of already gained muscles.

Triceps:
Triceps Pushdowns
Triceps Extensions
Vertical French extension
Here we can be confused a little because not all compound exercises appear to be multi-joint ones. For example, Barbell Curls are considered a compound exercise though, when performing it correctly, only one joint (elbow joint) is involved. That’s why logically this gym exercise is to be called an isolation one. Still, it’s a tradition to call all basic gym exercises (according to their effectiveness) compound ones.

You need to remember one important thing: compound exercises are the best choice for everyone who want to build muscles.

Bodybuilding exercises performing

There are a lot of bodybuilding exercises and, consequently, there are lots of exercise movements styles. All of them are very different: you can pay bigger attention to slow lowering of barbell (the negative phase) or, on the contrary, to the positive one; you can lift weights in ‘explosive’ style; you can do it quickly or slowly, etc. etc.

Exercise type

Positive (weight lifting is slower than lowering)Negative (lowering is slower than lifting)

Exercise speed

Quick (reps last 1-2 seconds and are performed without pauses)Middle (reps last 2 seconds)Slow (there can be a second pauses between reps; the rep movement lasts for more than 3-4 seconds)

Type + speed = exercise Temp

+ 2 point tempo
# Example: 3/2
# Eccentric / Concentric+ 3 point tempo# Example: 3/0/2
# Eccentric / Stretched / Concentric+ 4 point tempo
# Example: 3/0/2/1
# Eccentric / Stretched / Concentric / Contracted
Well, you possibly think that now I’m going to tell you what muscle exercise temp is the best? Unfortunately, I have to disappoint you: there is no unity of views regarding this issue among workout methodologists. And it’s not surprising because if we remember that the main goal of each gym workout is to get muscle micro-injuries in the result of using energy (ATP), it becomes obvious that it’s possible to achieve this goal with the help of any of the described methods. The only thing to be considered when choosing should be the fact that it becomes more and more difficult to achieve the said above goal as muscle training potential regularly increases. That’s why the speed of energy use (average set intensity) should regularly increase in gym exercises from one workout to another. It’s possible to achieve intensity increase not only by increasing apparatus weights but also by changing the movement performance biomechanics in muscle exercise.

Gym workout exercises: positive or negative?

If you’re are a beginner – consider yourself to be very lucky because in the very beginning of your training positive movement gym exercise will be more than enough for muscle growth. At the same time energy expenditure will be taking place mostly during weight lifting while it will be replenished during the reverse movement and rest in the lowest and highest points of the exercise trajectory.

Purposeful retarding of muscle exercise during the negative phase will lead to the situation when energy will be spend not only on the weight lifting but on its lowering as well; and that will increase average set intensity. When we cut down rest duration between exercise reps (uninterrupted movement) we increase the speed of energy expenditure even more. ‘Explosive’ style of weight lifting will enable us to use a heavier weight and this, together with the negative phase movement retarding, will increase the speed of energy expenditure even more. But even this situation isn’t the limit of exercise intensity: if you increase workout weight significantly and lift it with the help of your spotter but lower it on your own (negative reps) you’ll be able to reach the maximum intensity level of this set. A beginner’s muscles will hurt a lot after a workout exercises at which he was sticking exclusively to positive movements; but professional athletes can get muscles micro-injuries only if they use muscle exercise techniques aimed at set intensity increase (for example, negative reps). This fact became the basis of the delusion that muscle fiber micro-injuries appear only during the negative movement phase. The reason of micro-ruptures is not the negative phase itself but energy state of a muscle at the moment of this movement.

Conclusion: gym workout exercise choice.

Drawing conclusions, I can say that each exercise movement type and performance speed is good and effective in its way and has the right to obtain a certain place in your workout program. You, being a beginner, shouldn’t concentrate on injury-dangerous negative and ‘explosive’ exercise movements. Stick to middle speed and positive movement emphasis in the beginning; watch carefully the way you perform gym exercise and you’ll definitely succeed.